If it's locking up then it was overclocking properly, but it's unstable. I have no idea how the GTX 970 overclocks, but I'd check the temperature and determine if it can handle an increase of voltage to keep it stable. Also, OC the core and memory separately so you know what's breaking.

"We are a way for the cosmos to know itself." - Carl Sagan"I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it." - Mark Twain

An open mind is willing to consider new ideas, while provisionally accepting those backed by empirical evidence, and provisionally rejecting those without.

also is the atomic mag dead? didnt know havent bought an issue for years but I have a whole stack at home im willing to give away for a case of beer. There has to be about 100 of them or so. I used to buy it every month without fail.

"We are a way for the cosmos to know itself." - Carl Sagan"I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it." - Mark Twain

An open mind is willing to consider new ideas, while provisionally accepting those backed by empirical evidence, and provisionally rejecting those without.

Make sure to remove previous drivers, move slider for power limit all the way up, and adjust fan profile to keep it cool enough not but not super loud. Lately I've just ran mine at 1.4ghz for gaming but like to OC higher for benchmarks :-)

UnofficialOverclockingEULA field and add following text:
I confirm that I am aware of unofficial overclocking limitations and fully understand that MSI will not provide me any support on it

hmm did you read the link? You need to OC slowly. You need to find out what your core is right now before starting. With the new way the cards clock you might be running at 1300mhz out of the box more/less depending on factors and the brand. There is no set magical limit for OC, its free performance but you need to slowly bump up the core and memory 10-20mhz at a time, start on one or the other... After you find the limit for the core or memory, set it back down to stock setting "reset" and do the other and move the power limt and vcore all the way up again. When you find the highest for both, usually you want to lower it by 50mhz so your OC is stable for all programs, not just Heaven or 3dmark. Run those in window mode so you can watch your clocks as you move up the mhz. Usually most 970's will clock 1400mhz+ on the core, that might be +100 or it might be +150mhz in A.B. depending on your starting clock. To start OCing I would set the power limit and the vcore all the way up. Remember to watch your temps, I try to keep mine card at around 70c but up to 78c is fine before it will throttle. You might want up up the fan curve depending on what you see to keep it in that range. It might take you several hours or days to find the correct OC for your card. Once you find both limits and downclock it some, you should be stable or want to be stable in everything you game or bench on, then you are golden!

As for drivers, first uninstall any previous drivers... then go to nvidia.com and download the latest. Or, you could just go to nvidia and download the latest drivers and choose the option when installing for a "clean install". Note if you were running an AMD card before, you need to uninstall those drivers first anyway. If its a new build just go to nvidia and and get the latest.

Hope that helps, you will find tons on these cards by googling to see what others are getting too for a baseline. Memory OC is ok but Core OC is more important usually in most things :)